Social Media

Canadian Democracy in Crisis: A Challenge for the Creative Class

Posted Tue, 01/05/2010 - 17:50 by jesse

Once again Canadian democracy is in crisis, as our government has prorogued parliament to avoid a scandal concerning the torture of detainees in Afghanistan. Public opposition has found a home on social media like Facebook and Twitter, which pose a challenge and opportunity for creative leaders to emerge and possibly even rescue our democracy from death's door.

The nature of a minority government like ours is that no single party controls the lower house of Parliament, and as a result gory details about the use of torture in Afghanistan were about to be revealed due to the diligent work of the opposition parties. In proroguing Parliament, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is able to prevent (or more likely just delay) the public from learning more and thus ensure the survival of his government for at least another two months.

A crisis like this presents an opportunity to expand the democratic process and include more people in politics as a whole. However, it's hard not to snicker at the fact that joining a Facebook group to show opposition to something has become the ultimate cliche. While such a group does raise awareness and cross over into mainstream media with front page headlines, I am not alone in wondering whether it actually accomplishes anything.

Even worse, why is the alternative to this kind of virtual action doing absolutely nothing? It's as if it has already become such strong orthodoxy that if you don't join, or even worse complain, you're regarded as a nay-sayer and are also responsible for providing alternatives.

The justification for this staid strategy is that it helps to raise awareness and provides an outlet for new initiates to the political process. However I don't believe that awareness alone makes a difference, but rather it is the larger process of mobilizing to action, and evading marginalization.

Technology Trends for 2010

Posted Tue, 12/29/2009 - 16:26 by jesse

As another year comes to a close I thought I'd share some brief thoughts on what I anticipate for the world of technology in 2010:

The Might of Mobile

Mobile technology will continue to be a dominant trend as smart phones go from being tools for professionals, to devices that just about everyone has or wants.

A lot of the growth in the mobile sector is driven by applications. A related platform that I think will thrive in 2010 is Augmented Reality (o/k/a AR).

Augmented Reality is an effort to bring the qualities of the web to the physical world by literally adding a layer of hypertext on top of our material reality. Often described and associated with the concept of the "Internet of Things", the idea is to unlock web-based information associated with each object or location.

As a concept AR has been receiving a considerable amount of attention and investment. The recent announcement of advertising in AR will have a powerful and also normative effect.

In this regard, "hyper-local" advertising will be a big trend in 2010, and it will be driven by mobile and AR applications. This will be a way that Twitter starts to cash in, for example, bu having localized ads that target people in particular cities or neighbourhoods. If you don't want to be exposed to these ads, you'll be able to pay a premium and get Twitter with spam filters.

Tablet Computing

I'm kind of excited about the (re)arrival of tablet computers. Apple has one coming out in the spring, Google is rumoured to have one out in early summer, and I've been playing with Nokia's N900, which calls itself a tablet.

What excites me is the combination of mobility with traditional computational power and abilities. On the one hand, it will further drive the development of mobile applications, with the tablets marketed and treated like mobile devices. On the other, they enable a truly rich multimedia experience with their expanded touch screens and user interfaces.

One of their impacts will be to continue to accelerate the rate of technological change as evolution happens faster and companies push out new products and upgrades to keep up.

Is Privacy Dead?

Posted Wed, 11/04/2009 - 20:08 by jesse

Privacy is dead, and social media holds the smoking gun, at least that was the sentiment expressed on CNN.com by one of silicon valley's hottest pundits, Pete Cashmore. It's a sensationalist statement, but one that speaks to many people's feelings, both positive and negative, about how personal information gets caught up in the world wide web.

Is privacy really dead? No, not yet. However, there's a growing chorus of people empowered by social media who are eager to declare that it is. This is partly because of the power of networks, and their ability to leverage your private information for personal gain and/or amusement.

Social media is also regarded as a popularity tool that allows people to emulate the celebrity culture we are immersed in. We can all become micro-celebrities who capture attention and influence, albeit on a much smaller scale.

The fear is that as this starts to become more and more prevalent, discarding privacy will become compulsory, expected behaviour necessary for graduating from school, getting that job, buying the home, and succeeding in life.

Hypercube: Start Your Engines

Posted Wed, 06/24/2009 - 18:31 by jesse

Last night the Hypercube audition process came to a close, and 50 Canadians received a free Cube from Nissan Canada. I wasn't able to make it to the Toronto event, but watched via Twitter as winners were announced across the country.

Congratulations to the 50 people who won, and I hope those who did not are still feeling good about their participation. If not, I'm curious to hear about it.

Certainly we are hearing from those who's auditions were successful, and they could not be happier.

My friend Kevin Grandia won, in spite of the fact he lives in the suburbs, and wore a suit to the party last night (going straight from his corporate job). Yet Kevin was successful because he demonstrated a number of key qualities, such as creative videos, a sharp website, and effective mobilization of his supporters.

Talking to Kevin this morning it was great to hear his plans for the car. This is where the next phase becomes interesting. Following along with the 50 to see what they're going to do with their new Cubes.

Brave News World Summit

Posted Mon, 06/08/2009 - 00:32 by jesse

Jesse rapping about journalism A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in the Brave News World Summit hosted and organized by The Centre for Creative Communications at Centennial College in Toronto's east end.

It was a great day spent with interesting people who work in the local and regional media industry. The keynote was Jeff Jarvis, who was unable to attend, so he presented his "What Would Google Do" rap via skype.

I participated in an afternoon workshop around the concept of a journalist toolbox, or what any aspiring hack needs to know to make it in this cut throat business. The picture above is from that session, which was organized by Ellin Bessner who wrote her own blog post about the event.

There was also a blog compiled by Centennial students during the day, as well as a blog post from Melissa Feeney.

An Epic Thread Yields Rapid Internet Justice

Posted Wed, 05/27/2009 - 15:29 by jesse

Yesterday I was sent a link to an incredible and epic thread, which a meta-mob of auto enthusiasts formed to mete out rapid Internet justice on a car parts thief who had been preying upon them.

Suspicious Acura TSX without license plate It all started in the parking lot of Toronto's Yorkdale Mall. While the victim was at work, someone stole a specialized front lip from his car, an Acura TSX, in the middle of the day, using his own car to block what he was doing. The victim went to mall security, got video of the crime, but because the thief took the plates off his car, and there are no witnesses, the police said there was nothing they could do.

Frustrated by this lack of action, the victim turned to the TSXClub.com site, a forum for Acura TSX owners. He started the thread in the early hours of May 21st 2009.

As a bit of background, forums online are one of the largest and most vibrant elements of social media, and automotive forums tend to have a character and class all of their own. What is particularly interesting in this case is the not only way the forum responded, but also automotive forums of all kinds right across the web.

Immediately a suspect emerged, as one of the members recognized the car in the security video as being almost identical to photos of a car posted by another user of the site. At first people were hesitant to point fingers, but when the user tried to defend himself with a poorly written reaction, intense scrutiny started to fall on the suspect.

Thoughts from the first Free Summit

Posted Thu, 05/14/2009 - 20:30 by jesse

This past Monday I was fortunate enough to attend the first ever Free Summit held in San Mateo, California. ~~Organized~~ Hosted by TechDirt.com founder Mike Masnick ~~with help from the folks at~~ and organized by Sagescape, who also organized the Tech Policy Summit, the event sought to analyze and understand the business of free. The keynote speaker for the event was Wired editor Chris Anderson, whom I had seen deliver the same presentation a year earlier here in Toronto.

While I wrote a detailed report on the event for my clients, as well as a few CBC radio spots on the subject, I wanted to share some personal thoughts on my blog.

At one point during the day, Chris Anderson wondered aloud why it took 15 years to start talking about free in the context of business, and I feel the answer is that we've been focusing on the wrong things. The obsession with making money online has distracted us from the fact that people are where the real value lies.

Social media is finally teaching us to look at social dynamics and understand social relationships. It is rapidly becoming clear to all who care to notice that the moral taught to us by the web is "free."

Here Comes Augmented Reality

Posted Mon, 04/27/2009 - 11:33 by jesse

Augmented reality is kind of a hybrid between material reality and virtual reality in that it combines the power of hyperlinks and interconnected media with the geography and architecture of the physical world.

For a long time everyone assumed that virtual reality would be the basis of "cyberspace" and that it's arrival was imminent, however while it has been around from a technical perspective for well over a decade, very few regular folk have adopted it, outside of the gaming world of course.

So augmented reality is appearing as a kind of compromise that brings the benefits and promise of virtual reality to the real world that we all find so comfortable.

As well the rate of technological change is so rapid these days that while this may be the first time you've heard of augmented reality, I anticipate that you'll hear a lot more real soon, and by the end of the year it could be a regular part of the popular culture.

Hypercube: Casting a Reality TV Show

Posted Thu, 03/26/2009 - 14:05 by jesse

The Hypercube initiative has only just begun and already there's a flurry of activity as people start campaigning for one of the 50 Nissan Cubes. It's still really early, and I suspect only a small fraction of the overall participants have identified themselves. Nonetheless those who have stepped forward have the advantage of a head start, in that this kind of open source marketing is heavily influenced by those involved. Angie Kramer the creative director of this initiative is regularly conversing with participants via twitter about things like holding events in various Canadian cities.

It strikes me when I step back and take a broader look at what's happening that this is similar to the early stages of a reality television show, where you're inviting characters up onto the stage and asking them to demonstrate why they should be part of the fun. The irony of course is that with most shows this part of the process is never aired and takes place entirely behind the scenes. Yet with the hypercube you can pretty much see any and all aspects of how this campaign is taking shape.

For example I've been monitoring the keyword hypercube on twitter search and this allows me to generally follow both the conversation that @thehypercube has with participants but also what other people are saying about the project.

This type of radical transparency is rapidly emerging as the new normal for a lot of campaigns as they abandon attempts to control the conversation and instead hope that the discourse will hold both insights and opportunities to advance the visibility and appeal of the product.

The Hypercube and Open Source Marketing

Posted Thu, 03/19/2009 - 18:05 by jesse

I'm the type of person who has a wide range of interests, and I make a concerted effort to defy stereotype and expectation. For example I've always been interested in transportation, and while I resisted the automotive world for the first three decades of my life, I've lately been fully immersed in car and motorcycle culture. In fact I've been watching so much of the Speed channel that I intend to write a blog post analyzing their programming. In Pizza Pizza locations in Toronto you'll not only be able to see the Tech Trends series I produced, but soon a new series called Motorcycle Minute.

Recently I've been invited to participate in an exciting initiative called the Hypercube which will launch the Nissan Cube in Canada. I'm friends with some of the folk at the agency behind this experiment, Capital C, and they've asked me to observe and analyze what I would characterize as the largest and most comprehensive open source marketing campaign in Canada, maybe even the world.

Rather than spend millions on traditional advertising, Nissan Canada is instead going to give away 50 vehicles to people who they hope will use those vehicles as part of their already creative and somewhat public lives. This type of crowd source marketing on a national and evolving scale is truly impressive, not to mention risky. Yet as a model for open source marketing it demonstrates a courage and vision that I think will be necessary in getting through and even thriving in these volatile times that we're in.

Here I'm defining open source marketing as a process in which a product is introduced and sold to a market without a central command or message, but rather by facilitating a grassroots campaign that is diverse in its voices, culture, and outreach. There's a radical transparency at work here that represents a new approach to selling cars.